Southbay Beach QR Code v2.0

Just after I posted this I received the following email from one of the builders, Anthony Springall:

On Saturday 6th of March we decided to create an absolutely enormous QR Code in the sand of Southbay Beach Scarborough.

This time I used a 20″ cake board, four red and silver windmill twirly things, a length of wood from the cellar and a rake from the garden shed….

Unlike last time I had help from the start in the guise of a friend called T-Man, he came equipped with a SLR camera and a luke warm cup of coffee… I’d meant to have met him on the beach at 11am, but it was now 11:30am! I had been delayed somewhat by the speed I could travel on my Brompton with a rake and a long length of wood strapped between my legs…

Anyways, we chose to make the sandy QR Code in the middle of the beach underneath the 365 bedrooms of the Grand Hotel to guarantee an audience as we worked… also the vantage point of the balcony would give us some great images of the finished artwork.

We marked out an area using the rake and the red and silver windmill twirly things so passers by would give us a wide birth and not disturb the sand or set up deck chairs or cricket matches etc.. Then starting at the bottom lefthand corner and using the 20″ cake board, I outlined the first square…

T-Man recorded the birth with his camera, then when there was enough of a grid, he started to rake the pattern…

By the time we were a quarter of the way done beach strollers started to come up and ask questions… “what are you doing?”, “It looks great from up there… what is it going to be?”, “How long will it take?” etc.. etc..

T-man had to disappear for a while to check out some drums he was borrowing to take on a UK tour with an American Blues Artist called Chaz DePaolo and also to attend a friend’s Christening… I continued to make the grid.. 29 by 29…

By the time he returned I’d almost finished the grid and managed to rake the top left hand corner…

T-man reported that it was looking pretty good from above and quite a few people were following our progress as they supped on hot chocolate, coffee and beer from the Grand’s public bar… I handed him the rake and finished the grid.. it was now 3:30pm.

More Beach walkers posed their questions, asking what is was, how long had it taken us, why were we doing it and then the impossible happened…we had several who actually knew what the pattern of squares was and what it did… Age wasn’t the factor, it was whether or not they owned a smart phone.. one had deleted their barcode app as he hadn’t found a use for it or wasn’t aware it could read QR Codes. But when we showed him what QR Codes were and how they worked he said it was great that he’d download another reader… Dads with Lads were the most excited about the revelation that their phone could read a printed pattern and decode it in no time at all, then take them straight to the interweb etc.. Women were more interested in the money off coupons idea… old fashioned stereotyping never dies….

Most thought it was a great idea but wanted to know why they weren’t told about this fairly basic phone application when they bought their smart phone… and why wasn’t it on their phone’s start page ready to use..?

By 4:30pm we had finished the code and were on the Balcony overlooking our handy work, drinking Hot Chocolate… It looked pretty awesome!